“Correct!” Max returned. He followed her into the living room. “Just a little replastering and paint work in here; just cosmetics, nothing major. Change of floor covering, or maybe exposed floorboards, new curtains…”
Jeanne continued on her tour of Greenacres. Charles, in silence, followed her like a puppy, obedient and loyal.
“This will be the perfect place for entertaining, dear.” Jeanne perused the four corners of the room. “I can visualise the father sitting in front of a roaring fire, holding a glass of sherry, gazing into the embers! How romantic! Oh, and an antique mirror. How wonderful! But it is rather, um, dusty!”
Greta held out her hand and ushered Jeanne towards the door, away from the mirror in case there was a repeat performance from her unwanted guest.
“Yes, it’s exquisite, isn’t it? Now, come and have a look upstairs, mummy. Let’s leave the boys here for a moment.”
The sound of footsteps on the bare floorboards disappeared upstairs amidst hoots of approval from Jeanne.
“You’ve done very well, my boy. This place will be a jolly good show. Do you think you’ll be happy here?” Charles asked.
“Yes, I do, Charles. However, I will have to stay in London for the foreseeable future. But I’ll be here at weekends. You know, have to keep the wolf from the door, so to speak. Have to be realistic. Still got the London gaff to pay for too!”
“Of course, my boy. Understand perfectly. The way to go though, as you are still young.” Charles nodded his approval. “Greta will always have company; you know Jeanne will, no doubt, be a regular visitor. I know she won’t want to keep away!”
“Yes, as long as she gives Greta a little breathing space. If you get my meaning.” Max sowed the seed to ensure Jeanne didn’t become an unwelcome pest.
“I’ll make sure that she doesn’t visit that often.” Charles tapped his nose.
“Better join them before Jeanne sends out the search party. Oh, and we need to open that champers!” Max led Charles out of the living room. He offered him a hand over the uneven floorboards to prevent a catastrophe. Max didn’t feel the sharp blast of cold air sweep through the room as they left. It scattered the layer of dust on the mirror through the air like a stealth cloud.
Greta and Jeanne stood in the proposed master bedroom. It overlooked the fields and downs and faced the Smuggler’s Hide that stood on the hill in the distance.
“What a fantastic view, dear. Imagine waking up to that every morning.”
“I know,” Greta smiled. “Do you remember when we were in the pub? When I first saw this place. When we came down here with Laurel and Hardy. I just knew it was the place. Even from the outside; I could see through all the repairs and dilapidations and all the work that it needed. It just felt so right, so very much like we were destined to live here.”
“Always one to go with your gut instincts, aren’t you?” Jeanne warmly held on to Greta’s arm. “Sometimes, it’s the best way to be. The surest way to make your decisions.”
“I am a great believer of fate and that each person’s destiny is mapped out for them. They just have to find the right route.” Greta nodded to herself.
“Very true, dear. It didn’t take you long to find yours, did it?” Jeanne hugged her daughter’s arm in appreciation.
They gazed out at the view across the fields and to the distant down land. There was a lone tractor working on the hillside, in silence, with only birdsong that could be heard including the intermittent call and flap of wings of a cock pheasant.
“When did you say the builders are starting work?” Jeanne broke the silence.
“Monday. Max and the architect will be here too. Poring over the plans, no doubt.”
“And who’s going to be the project manager?” Jeanne coined the phrase, pretending to sound intelligent and modern.
“Moi, of course!” Greta announced. “Max will be leaving on Monday evening and won’t be back until the weekend, so I will be overseeing what they do. How many cups of tea they drink; packets of biscuits they can devour.”
“Good job, dear. Need to keep the blighters on their toes. No slacking, eh? Lots of work to be done!”
“You sound like the father!” Greta laughed.
“The poor, dear, father. He means well; just gets under my feet,” Jeanne sighed. “Still, I wouldn’t want him any other way,” she added.
Jeanne began to walk around the bedroom.
“Will you be having an ensuite?”
“Yes, and a dressing room. There is just about enough space to fit them in. You must have a look at the plans. They look fantastic. I just hope it works!” Greta mused.
“And what about your job, darling? When will you be leaving?” Jeanne nonchalantly asked.
“My boss said that I can stay on, as a consultant; I will be able to work from home, with just the occasional trip up to London for meetings. I can’t wait!” Greta smiled.
“So you will be a permanent resident on our beautiful Island then?”
“Yep! Hopefully, I will be back home!” Greta replied.
“Is Maxim okay with that?” Jeanne gently probed.
“Well, he hasn’t said that he isn’t.”
“Wonderful, darling!” Jeanne kissed her daughter’s cheek. “You are such a lucky girl!”
Max and Charles joined them, clutching glasses and the champagne. Max elected to pop the cork with Charles holding firmly on to two glasses. Perfectly chilled, everyone raised charged glasses. Max proposed a toast.
“Here’s to a new life in the country; to Greta, to Jeanne and Charles for their home we will be using as a hotel and also to all the renovations! May they run as smoothly as clockwork!”
Glasses chinked and ‘hear, hear’s echoed around the empty bedroom.
Max smiled at Greta who was wiping away a solitary tear from her cheek. “You made it back home!”
Greta mouthed to Max, “I love you!”
Chapter Ten
Over the following weeks, Greenacres resembled a bombsite. Every room had been gutted by the builders. Lathe and plaster had been torn down from the ceilings and walls, floorboards lifted and removed. The cottage stood in its naked state with bare walls and floor joists. Greta was amazed at just how much masonry and dust had been created. She gave up trying to clear away oceans of it in her industrial sized vacuum cleaner. The builders, supervised by Mike the architect, had made a good impression with the renovations. They had, however, stumbled across inevitable barriers that held up the work. The outside end wall needed to be rebuilt. Unfortunately, as the builders chipped away the plastered and pebble-dashed exterior, an accumulation of decades of water had soaked through the walls causing severe water ingress and damp penetration. The walls were not only constructed of brick, but of every conceivable material including mud, small pieces of wood, flint stones and pebbles, even a cork! Max thought at some time in the past, Greenacres must have hosted a memorable party! It was hard to imagine the cottage standing up against all the weather elements when only a slight gust of wind could have quite easily brought the wall crashing down. Greta decided Greenacres was deemed to be a lucky cottage, remembering what Rev Oli had said, that it had stood up to wars, hurricanes and whatever other historic incident she could think of.
It was late Friday afternoon and she was waiting for a call from Max to say he was on his way back to the Island for the weekend. Her mobile phone eventually rang.
“Do you know the builders stop work at 3pm on a Friday?” Greta spluttered.
“Oh, hello to you too, darling. How are you?” Max replied with sarcasm.
“Sorry, hello love, I forgot my manners for a moment. I’m suffering from exasperation and impatience, I suppose.” Greta raised her hand to her forehead. “It’s really annoying as they only have another couple of hours work left to do in the kitchen before it is ready for decorating. Now it won’t get done until Monday. Ergh!”
“Try not to worry about it. Everything else is going to schedule, isn’t it? And
they haven’t buggered off to do another job, have they? I had their word they would stick with us and not get bogged down with other jobs. They know that if they did, they wouldn’t get paid. You have to keep one step ahead of them, Greta. That is what being a project manager is all about.”
“What time are you going to be here?” Greta sulkily changed the subject.
“I’m about fifteen minutes from the ferry terminal, so I will make the 6 o’clock sailing.” Max checked his watch.
“Good, then you can take me out for supper.” Greta was determined not to endure another of her mother’s ample gut-busting dinners.
“I’ll bring a takeaway home with me, as I want to have a look at Greenacres first and see what progress has been made so far.” Max was also determined. He hadn’t seen the cottage for nearly a week and was keen to survey the current state of the renovations and whether they were on track for the proposed finish date.
“Okay, I’ll see you here soon then, bye.” Greta ended the call.
She walked slowly around the kitchen and gazed at the plastered walls. They were caked in a clay coloured plaster, half wet, half dry but the room was slowly beginning to take shape. Greta and Max had decided to use the old dairy as their new kitchen. The existing kitchen was planned to be a utility-cum-boot room. The new kitchen was so much bigger and able to offer a dining area and access to a planned conservatory, a future phase. They had knocked the walls down from a storeroom, off the dairy, to provide the extra space. Greta folded her arms and stepped carefully over the spent masonry on the floor. She walked over to where the old storeroom used to be. She noticed a slight dip in the floor. She kicked at the raised pile of earth to the side of it and, as she did so, a small hole appeared by her foot. A layer of soil disappeared through it. She continued to tap the ground with the heel of her shoe and the hole became slightly bigger. She knelt down and began to move away the masonry with her hands and the hole continued to grow even larger. She got up and stepped back as dirt and stones had rapidly disappeared into the hole.
She groaned.
“Oh no! I bet this is a well and I am now going to disappear into oblivion! Ahhhh!”
Greta lost her footing and was thrust down into the hole, feet first. She tried to grab the sides of the hole as she fell but couldn’t get a handhold. She screamed as gravity drew her down and down until she hit the ground with a resounding bump.
“Oh, shit! Heeeelp!” she shouted out into the darkness. She lay in a crumpled heap on the ground. She swallowed and tasted gritty particles of earth in her mouth. She made a face and spat out a clump of mud. She began to move. She was covered in dust, cobwebs, masonry and wet, claggy earth. The hole smelt musty and the air filled with damp. Greta felt across her arms and legs to make sure she hadn’t broken any bones. She flicked dirt from her hair and tried to brush it away with her hands. With relief she was able to stand without too much pain, just grazes and bruises from the fall. She looked up from where she had fallen and could see a small chink of light from the kitchen.
“Just my luck,” she winced. “Trust me to fall into a well. Urgh!” she shuddered. Suddenly her fear of spiders raced through her mind; she clutched her sides in horror.
“I bet there is an army of them down here, just waiting for me.” She reached for her mobile phone and turned on its light. She peered into the darkness; her imagination was running riot. She looked about her and could see countless cobwebs that had broken her fall. There were extremely large cobwebs. Her mind raced as she thought of tarantulas crawling from the inner confines of the hole. Or perhaps a gargantuan arachnid, larger than a man, with tree-trunk proportioned legs that could crush a human effortlessly with a thrash of its tentacle-like leg. She tried to compose herself. “I watched too many B-movies,” she nervously cackled to herself. Her mind recalled the severed hand incident and she shuddered. She held her breath and then held on to her shoulder. She dialled Max’s number. She was in luck. She could get a very faint signal; one bar. Max answered immediately.
“I have done something really stupid,” she began.
“Really? Now that is a surprise.”
“Listen, I am in a hole…” Greta started to explain.
“Yes, its called Greenacres Farm, isn’t it?” Max laughed.
“Shut up Max, no seriously, I’m in a hole. I have fallen through a hole in the kitchen floor. I think it’s an old well. Luckily there isn’t any water in here. I haven’t hurt myself, too much, but its bloody dark down here and I think there might be urgh… you know what… around. Can you hurry up and get me out of here… please!” she urged.
“I don’t believe it! Trust you to wait until everyone has gone home to do something stupid like falling down a hole!”
“Spare me the lectures. I just want to get out of here. I’m lucky to get a signal on my phone.”
“Yes, that’s a first! Can’t you try to climb out?” Max offered jokingly, he was still highly amused.
“Don’t you think I’ve already tried to do that?” she angrily replied. “Not really, it’s a long way back up and I don’t know how stable the walls of the hole are. I think I’d rather sit tight until you get here. Then you can find one of the builder’s ladders and rescue me, like the hero you are.”
“Okay, as long as you haven’t hurt yourself. I’m on the ferry now so I will be about another half an hour. It should still be light when I reach you. Just stay put and hold on.”
“Well, I can’t go anywhere else, can I? If I freak out, I’ll ring you.”
“Shall I ring your mother?” asked Max.
Greta looked incredulously at her phone.
“Do you really think I could cope with her shouting instructions down the hole at me? And the father would be down here with me like a shot. No, I think I’d prefer to wait. It seems the safest option.” As Greta spoke, a steady line of sand and dust cascaded down the walls. Looking around her, she swallowed slowly. “Just hurry up, Max. Please!”
“I’ll hang fire on the takeaway then. Till we have got you out of your present predicament!”
Greta tried to make herself comfortable on the ground. She hugged her knees and vigilantly kept watch for the spiders. She began to sing. Her mother always said, if she was in danger or afraid, singing usually helped. She sang a very out of tune rendition of the Beatles Norwegian Wood, that always seemed to calm her nerves. “I… once knew a girl, or should I say, she, da, da, da, da… isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood…”
Greta rubbed her arm. She winced as it felt bruised and grazed from the fall. Her knee was also beginning to throb as bruising and swelling was setting in. She decided to stand up and attempt to climb out once more. She tried to get her foot on the edge of the hole only to find there was nothing to support it, only a crumbling mass of wet earth. Her foot slipped and she felt the wetness of the earthen wall seeping on to her trouser leg. She sighed and stepped back. She grabbed her phone and shone the light around. There in the corner was another large hole; it looked vaguely like a passageway. She was amazed to see it and stood to attention.
“Should I stay or should I go now… if I stay there will be trouble,” she sang to herself. “Oh, god! Why me? Right, Greta! Be brave, go and have a look,” she told herself. She clutched her arm, swallowed slowly and took a step forward. She stopped, swallowed again and then took another step. She raised her phone in front of her and held it at arm’s length, peering around the shaft of light. She could see there was definitely a passageway before her. It was pitch black and draped with large menacing cobwebs. It was Greta’s worst nightmare. She willed herself to take another step forward. The light from her phone gave her a little more confidence and she continued to blurt out a jumbled song. She hit her head against the low roof of the passageway. She dropped the phone. The light momentarily extinguished and she was left in complete darkness.
“Shit! This really isn’t funny at all!” she shrieked. She knelt down and tapped the ground to find her phone. Her hands brushed against a furry,
stationary object and she screamed. Jumping up, she hit her head again. “It had better not be that creepy hand… urgh! Shit!” she exclaimed. “Come on, girl! Get a grip, and find the bloody phone!”
She knelt down again and reached out into the darkness, narrowly avoiding the fleshy object. The phone was on the ground beside it. Greta heaved a sigh of relief.
“Thank you! Thank you!” she whispered and switched the light back on the phone. It illuminated the decaying carcass of a large rat. “Ergh! Gross! This is a living hell! And it stinks like one too, rancid, horrible thing!”
Greta kicked the rat out of her pathway and continued along the passage, flashing the light from side to side as she gingerly took one step at a time. She was bent double to prevent another direct hit of her head.
“If they could only see me now!” She thought of her mother and father and what distress it would cause them to see Greta looking so dishevelled. The passage seemed to carry on for a long way so she decided to turn back. As she turned, she became entangled in a large cobweb, which made her shrink back in fright to the wall of the passage. As she did so, she felt a flat piece of wood brush against her back. In fact; several pieces of flat wooden panels. She patted the surface of the planks and it made a hollow sound. She turned around and shone the light. It was an old door. In puzzlement, she reached for the latch and lifted it. A cloud of powdery dust fell from around the frame and the door hinges screeched in a piercing tone as it reluctantly opened. Greta’s heart was in her mouth. “Please, please don’t give up on me,” she spoke to the phone and clutched it for all she was worth. Wiping cobwebs from her hair, she drew a deep breath and peered around the door. She blinked in amazement. It was a little room, complete with an old wooden box and a few Hessian sacks on the floor. She shone the light around the walls inside and saw a candleholder tacked loosely to the wall with a spent, drooping white candle hanging from it, shrouded in thick cobwebs. She shone the light around the other side of the room and saw what appeared to be another larger box. “Should I stay or should I go now…?” she nervously muttered. “If I stay… there will be trouble…”
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